I tried Luke again.
You’ve reached Luke Edison at Bay Area Therapeutics. Sorry I’m unavailable at the moment...
I opened my messages, intending to text Harkless and let him know that he should come fetch me, ASAP. Instead I keyed L.
The screen autopopulated Luke Edison.
I touched his name, bringing up our chat history.
We had last communicated eight days ago, the morning after brunch.
R u around
he’d written.
Can we talk
The message had come in at ten thirty-three a.m. I would have been at work.
In any event, I’d never replied.
Now I typed
Yo sorry what’s up
I watched the screen.
It remained static.
Call me please
I wrote.
Detective Rigo was standing at the far end of the motor court, immersed in his phone, one foot propped on an artfully placed boulder.
I had questions for him, too.
What did he make of the open driveway gates, the partially raised hangar door?
Did he intend to check for security camera footage? Or had he written off that possibility due to the outage, the way Harkless had?
With no cars missing, there was no reason for Rigo to zero in on the collection. Not before he’d done the basics. Talk to the victim’s girlfriend, family, friends, business associates.
He noticed me coming and waved. “Were you able to find the phone?”
“Nope. I’m going to head back.”
He nodded. Cocked a thumb toward the garage. “Remarkable.”
“I’m not much of a car guy,” I said.
“Nor am I. But one must admire the conviction.”
“Oh sure. We can’t leave it open like that.”
“The driveway is the only way in or out,” he said.
“You’ll have someone here around the clock.”
“That was what you requested, is it not?”
“Have they had a chance to dust out there?”
“Not yet.”
“Once you’re all set, ping us please, so we can seal up. My partner will email about the autopsy.”
Rigo smiled. “Open communication.”
“Good luck,” I said.
“To you as well.” He paused. “But.”
I looked at him. His tie was tightly knotted and his suit jacket free of sweat stains.
“I saw your picture,” he said. “In the office? Basketball. Also my sport.”
I nodded, not catching the joke. Then he began waving his hand over his head to emphasize his short stature, saying “Eh? Eh?” and laughing.
I joined him. Ha ha ha.
“Actually, I was a gymnast,” he said.
“Is that right,” I said, because apparently we were having a conversation.
“Back in Brazil.”
“Right. That’s awesome. Okay, well, I’ll have my guy pick me up. Be in touch.”
Rigo turned and began climbing the front steps. I composed a text to Harkless. Held my thumb over the send arrow.
The detective disappeared inside.
I hit the arrow and sprinted down the concrete path to the garage.
Ducking beneath the hangar door, I drew from my vest a small packet of tissues.
I’ve been a law enforcement officer for twelve years. I’ve been a coroner for ten. I have never accepted a bribe, bowed to the influence of another, exploited my power, knowingly arrested an innocent person, or distorted evidence to suit my preferences. I’m a human being, I’m fallible, but I strive to be honest and to stay within the limits of the law and morality.
Without that, what am I?
All my life I have been the brother to a person I did not want to understand. Even as a child I considered him lazy and sloppy. Then he became reckless and volatile.
Then he became a criminal.
He is the action, I the equal and opposite reaction.
I wiped down the Camaro’s doors and handles.
I wiped down the windows, the hood, the trunk latch, and the side mirrors.
I exited the garage and walked toward the motor court at a steady pace.
I stopped.
Rigo was back on the motor court, his foot on the same boulder. Maybe he’d sensed the awkwardness between us and gone inside to wait for me to leave.
He looked up from his screen. Gave his slight, inquisitive smile. “Deputy?”
I trotted forward with the tissue balled in my palm. “Had to take one more peek.”
“And you claim to have no interest.”
“You said it. Respect the conviction.”
“Mm.” He resumed scrolling.
I slipped the tissue in my pocket. Luke hadn’t replied to my texts. He still hadn’t, six minutes later, when Harkless pulled up to retrieve me.
Chapter 3
Like hospitals, fire departments, and other essential services, the Coroner’s Bureau was running on generators. To conserve fuel, the thermostat had been set to seventy-six. Entering the intake bay I felt the mild air crush around me and started shivering violently.
“You okay?” Harkless said.
I said I’d meet him upstairs.
I pushed into the men’s locker room, threw the tissue in the trash, and peeled off my sodden shirt, rubbing a towel over damp hair and gooseflesh, watching for a call or text from Luke.
Nothing.
I put on a clean shirt, composed myself, and went up to the squad room. Jed Harkless was in his cubicle next to mine, mired in the initial paperwork on Vandervelde. Deputy Nikki Kennedy had a pen between her teeth and was scooping her Kool-Aid-red hair. Deputy Lindsey Bagoyo murmured consolingly into the phone.
The techs: Carmen Woolsey in her big witchy skirt. Dani Botero and Lydia Januchak, gossiping by the printer.
Down the hall, Sergeant Clarkson laughed behind her office door. “I know it.”
Everyone doing their jobs.
To them, it was a regular afternoon.
Ten years is a long time to remain a deputy coroner. I should be a sergeant by now, at the least. Higher-ranking friends have implied that I would be, if not for a couple of incidents that have earned me a reputation for insubordination.
Over the spring I’d applied for permission to take the exam. It was granted and I passed. The catch was that there were no openings in the Coroner’s Bureau. Moving up meant moving out to another duty station. Amy and I agreed that we needed the extra money. But she wasn’t going to push me to leave the post I’ve kept for so long and that I love.
Then fate brought a reprieve: Juanita Clarkson gave notice. Her husband’s employer was relocating its HQ to Austin, effective January first.
Less than three months remained till I took her place.
My new shirt was already wicking. I put Rory Vandervelde’s house keys in a desk drawer. The nub of paper with the Camaro’s tag and VIN was in my back pocket. I felt it as if I were sitting on a nail. The urge to check my phone was a rag in my throat.
I reopened the drawer and buried the phone at the back behind the keys.
Focus.
I clicked on Rory Vandervelde’s case file, opened the photo folder, and plugged in the Nikon to upload. Thumbnails sprouted in tidy rows, reproducing my run of the house in miniature. They dragged me, herky-jerky, across the foyer to the living room, around the fallen end table and bloody glass, over the marble tiles and along the bloodstained hallway and into each of the myriad rooms and through the trees toward the garage. What if I’d forgotten to delete the picture of the license plate? I had to stop myself from yanking out the cord. The hangar door appeared, followed by the flash-saturated garage interiors, opulent forms and lustrous colors; the key safe and the hydraulic lift; Frank Sinatra and the hidden crank mechanism, and then the camera skipped over to the pool house and the putting green and the tennis court, dusty and benign.